[B-Greek] Greek NT audio

Leonard Jayawardena leonardj at live.com
Fri Oct 3 23:31:22 EDT 2008



This is a somewhat belated response to Dr. Randall Buth's (my apologies for getting his surname wrong) rejoinder dated 27/09/08 to my post of the same date.

I think this discussion has not been as profitable as it might have been because of the confusion of several issues, which need to be separated from one another for the sake of clarity.

(1) First, there is the issue of the pedagogical methods to be used in teaching NT or Koine Greek--RB's so called living language methods vs. other more traditional pedagogical methods.

Few would doubt, the efficacy, at least in principle, of the immersion methodology followed by RB's language school for the courses it offers (I had a look at his website before writing this). That basically simulates how we all learnt our mother tongue and many people acquire a second (or even a third) language in a similar way. All humans beings learnt to speak before they learned to read or write and some only speak all their lives and never learn to write or read (illiterates). Immersion methodology may help the student to easily and firmly fix basic grammatical forms and vocabulary in memory and in a much shorter time than a traditional course of instruction of comparable content.

However, because of the limited period in which the immersion learning takes place and also the fact there are no living authentic Koine speakers left on earth with whom a modern student of Koine can converse, there is obviously a limit to what can be achieved in an immersion program for Koine Greek. Therefore a student who undergoes an immersion program should not be under any illusion that he is learning Koine exactly like Peter, Paul, etc., in the first century.

(2) Second, the issue of which pronunciation system to adopt in teaching NT Greek. Is RB advocating his system of pronunciation for all students of NT Greek or just those who follow his "living language methods"? I can think of four categories of students:

(a) Students who work on their own with only text books, dictionaries, etc.

(b) Students who work on their own with text books, dictionaries, etc., using whatever audio/visual materials they can lay their hands on.

(c) Students learning with a teacher using conventional teaching methods. The teaching may or may not be augmented with audio/video materials.

(d) Students learning with a teacher using the immersion methodology (which RB calls "living language methods"). Again, the teaching may or may not be augmented by audio/video materials.

The pronunciation system used is important for categories (b) to (c) above and, to a lesser extent, even for category (a)--perhaps the pronunciation has no relevance whatsoever only to students born deaf? Students of category (b) are best served by a system of pronunciation which enables the student to recognize the Greek words spoken in audio materials easily and also provides aural reinforcement of the written words. Students of category (d) need to be able to recognize words easily when they are spoken by the teacher. If the teaching is augmented with audio/visual materials, then same remarks as for (b) above. It is only in immersion programs, where the learning is based more on physical activities, listening and speaking rather than the writen word, that the phoneticity of the language becomes a less important issue. But the vast majority of students of NT Greek belong to categories (a) to (c) above and the Erasmian system-- I have written more on this below--is the best option for them. I think that the advantages of using Erasmian in their case would far outweigh any advantages of using the assumed historical pronunciation or the modern pronunciation. Would RB agree?

However, whether even for immersion students the assumed historical pronunciation that RB advocates helps or hinders in the medium or long term can only be ascertained by conducting a controlled experiment in which one group of students are taught the historical pronunciation and another Erasmian and then their progress is monitored for years afterwards.

Another argument against the adoption of the assumed historical pronunciation is the scarcity of audio materials available for this pronunciation compared with the Erasmian and the modern pronunciation, which would put students who use the historical pronunciation at a disadvantage vis-a-vis students who use the other pronunciations.

(3) The "fluency" issue.

In response to my statement that "The phoneticity of Greek with the Erasmian system of pronunciation is one of the 'small mercies' of learning this otherwise not-so-easy-to-learn language," Dr. Randall Buth (hereafter RB for convenience) writes:

Quote

One must add for perspective, that this 'small mercy' has generally been taking place in an environment where the students NEVER internalize the language. If Erasmians had been speaking the language and truly internalizing it, I may never have bothered to develop a KOINH PROFORA. One does wonder if the artificiality of Erasmian, its historical wrongness, and its unacceptability to the millions of ancient Greek readers in Greece, have contributed to Erasmian users not bothering to work toward fluency? I don't know. I wouldn't want to find out.

Unquote

The word "fluency" means "the ability to speak and/or write a particular language competently and with ease." We can also talk about "reading fluency" and "listening fluency." By "internalizing" RB means, I believe, to *speak* Greek and make it a part of yourself in a way you cannot by just reading it. Therefore by "fluency" RB means speaking fluency. But the basic purpose of the study of NT Greek, or Koine Greek, is to be able to read and understand an ancient text called the NT and other relevant texts, not to be able to speak the language. It is certainly true that, at least in the context of living languages, one's knowledge of a language is not complete unless one is able to speak it with at least reasonable fluency. However, there are many people in the world who can read a book in a second (or even a third or fourth) language and understand what they read quite well even though their ability to express themselves in that language in speech may be disappointing for some reason, the reason being that speaking and reading are different skills. And in the context of the study of NT Greek, the main aim is the development of reading and comprehension skills.

RB wonders whether "the artificiality of Erasmian, its historical wrongness, and its unacceptability to the millions of ancient Greek readers in Greece" are the reasons why 'Erasmians' have not bothered to develop "fluency." Actually, the real reason for this is quite simple: Koine Greek is a dead language and any revived Koine "speech" itself would be artificial. Modern Greeks themselves have not bothered to develop "fluency" in Koine Greek and the pronunciation is not the reason for it. RB himself stated in one of his recent posts on this thread, "[M]odern Greeks do not speak and do not try to speak in the old language. They are content to speak in modern Greek when discussing an ancient text." There other dead languages, too, such as Sanscrit, Latin, Chaucer's English, etc. I know there are "Latin speaking clubs," but if there no "speaking clubs" for the other dead languages, the pronunciation can't be the issue. Therefore the "small mercy" of the Erasmian system has *not* been, as RB seems to think, at the expense of demotivating student from attempting to "speak" Koine.

What "would" motivate modern students of Koine Greek to try and "speak" it is not the adoption of the assumed historical pronunciation but their being convinced of the benefits they would gain from such an intellectual exercise. And I would recommend Erasmian for beginning students of Greek for practical reasons. RB has admitted to the psychological factor involved in his choice of pronunciation. Any psychological inhibition a student may have in using Erasmian on account of its artificiality can be overcome by his being convinced of the practical advantages of using it.

However, one must not be under any illusions about what can be achieved in such an exercise. Since there are no living Koine speakers left on earth, however much you "speak" Koine Greek you cannot exceed the total sum of the knowledge of Koine available in existing scholarly works subject to any fresh insights that you may be able to bring into our understanding of the language based on your study of such works and ancient texts (including the NT). To think otherwise is to delude oneself. In Koine "speech" you can only repeat and recycle only the knowledge of Koine that is already available in books. Nothing new can be added to our present knowledge in such an intellectual exercise.

Food for thought. There were in the past and there are at present great Greek scholars to whom we owe a great debt for our knowledge of Koine Greek. Was, for example, A. T. Robertson "fluent" in the sense RB uses that word and, if not, did his "lack of fluency" detract from his scholarship in any way?

(4) The fourth issue is the alleged defects of the Erasmian pronunciation.

In his article hH KOINH PROFORA, under "Comparison of Other Systems of Pronunciation," he points out what he considers to be defects of the Erasmian system (US version). The words below within quotations marks are from his article.

# "Two vowel symbols [EI, U] are joined to the *wrong* phonemes for Koine."

I don't understand exactly what RB means by this. Perhaps if he expands on this statement with illustrations, we will understand better. Anyway, whatever RB means, does it make any difference to our comprehension of Koine Greek texts, which is ultilmately the purpose of studying NT Greek, or even Koine "speech"?

#"Then several vowels are artificially differentiated, so that homonyms, rhyme and ambiguity for the original audience are masked over."

Homonyms and rhyme could be of practical significance when word play is involved since the appreciation of the word play used by the writer can sometimes contribute to our understanding of the text. For example, in "I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel" (Hosea 1:4), there is a word play between "Israel" and "Jezreel," which is even clearer in Hebrew. This word play is not meaningless: Gomer's first child, "Jezreel," symbolizes Israel and this relationship is further confirmed by the above word play. But I am not aware of any case in the NT where the presence of homonyms and rhyme is exegetically significant in any way. Perhaps RB will show us with examples how the recognition of homonyms and rhyme in the NT could be practicallly important for the reader?

I am not sure what RB means by "ambiguity." Again, will he be good enough to clarify this with examples? Does this mean ancient Koine speekers having to resort to various devices to avoid ambiguity because of the same phonemes being represented by different graphemes, for example, the possibility of the indicative being taken for the subjunctive, etc. or vice versa with the historical pronunciation?

Whatever value there is in appreciating "homonyms, rhyme and ambiguity," is this not a small price for beginning students to pay in return for the overwhelming advantage of artificially differentiating several vowels, as RB puts it?

# "The voiced fricatives are pronounced hard, but the voiceless aspirated stops are pronounced soft as fricatives."

RB remarks that this is "historically backwards from 1st century." This matter is purely of academic interest for the beginning student of Greek. He also says, "It is also out of step with principle #4, since it neither leads on to modern [Greek pronunciation], nor is it true to the classical Attic." The Erasmian pronunciation and the modern pronunciation are so different from one another in other ways that these differences will not, I think, matter that much anyway.

It is in the area of the textual criticism that a knowledge of the historical pronunciation becomes practically useful for the student of the NT, but surely this does not warrant subjecting students to learning the language with the assumed historical pronunciation?

With regard to reading papyri and other ancient documents relevant to NT studies, by the time a student has reached that stage he will have already mastered NT Greek, so that making the adjustment to the historical pronunciation when reading such ancient documents will not be too difficult?

Since the Erasmian system of pronunciation is not the historical pronunciation used in koine, the basic rationale, in my view, for the use of the Erasmian system in the study of NT Greek is its one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes and therefore its practical utility. Therefore by how much it lacks this one-to-one correspondence by so much its practical utility is diminished.

As stated in RB's article, in the US version of the Erasmian system, EI=H and U (before vowels)=OU. But in the system used in J. W. Wenham's "The Elements of New Testament Greek" (British author), EI is pronounced like the diphthong in "veil" and H is pronounced like the "ê" in "fête," though Wenham says at the end of the chart of pronunciation that "No distinction in pronunciation is to be attempted between [H] and [EI], or between [EU] and [HU]." U is pronounced like "oo" in "book" and OU is pronounced like the vowel in "route" (/ru:t/, British pronunciation). O is pronounced like "o" in "not" (British pronunciation) and W is pronounced like "o" in "tone." AI is pronounced as "ai" in "aisle," OI as "oi" in "oil," AU as "au" in "Faust" and UI as "ui" in "quit." The consonants are pronounced as in the US version of Erasmian.

This system of pronunciation overcomes the two weaknesses of the US version mentioned above, i.e., EI=H and U (before vowels)=OU. I think it is useful maintain a distinction between EI and H in spite of Wenham's advice, subject to which comment I would recommend Wenham's version of Erasmian for students of NT as it meets the all important criterion of one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes. The fact that there are different versions of Erasmian somewhat diminshes its usefulness and it is high time, I think, that this state of affairs was addressed by followers of Erasmian.

Now I will deal with an astonishing statement by RB.

In response to the following passage from RB's post

"Consider French, with spelling quite a bit trickier than Koine Greek. "French for Reading" is sometimes taught to grad students in Erasmian 'pronounce each graph', but never for students of French lit. And 'French for Reading' students do not develop toward fluency. What French department would ever consider giving a student 1-2-3 years of French according to Erasmian pronunciation rules, and then saying, "by the way, you can change to the French system if you ever get the urge"? I think the serious students would feel betrayed."

I wrote

" I think this is an argument by false analogy. French is a living language. True fluency in French is achieved by not only by reading French writings but also by listening to spoken French and speaking it, the last two of which require that you have the ability to recognize French words when spoken by a fluent speaker and to pronounce words in an acceptable manner. The student of French--and this applies to other living languages--is not at liberty to choose the system of pronunciation he will use because it has already been decided for him by others who speak the language. And he must master the pronunciation of those whom he wishes to communicate with--whether he likes it or not-- if he is to develop true fluency in that language.

But the case of Koine Greek is quite different. Koine Greek is a dead language with no living speakers. Those who speak it today do so basically in classroom situations, i.e., role play, as a learning aid. But why cannot we use the Erasmian system in role play? Unlike in the case of a living language, students of NT Greek ARE at liberty to choose the system of pronunciation. Dr. Randall Ruth's contention would be valid if there was AT LEAST ONE LIVING KOINE SPEAKER LEFT ON EARTH from."

To which RB replied:

"This is a false 'false analogy'. If fact there are quite a few million users of ancient Greek who use a modern pronunciation, the whole Greek nation. I like being able to talk with them. I can. They even understand me with my KOINH PROFORA...."

LJ: Is RB actually saying that the whole Greek nation speaks "ancient Greek" with a modern accent? If so we should without any delay start leaning the modern pronunciation, pack our bags and go live in Greece for the rest of our lives if we are really serious about learning "ancient Greek." :-)

Obviously, he cannot have meant that but that is what his words say. What he probably meant to say is that the whole Greek nation speak the modern version of Greek with a modern accent. But modern Greek is sufficiently different from ancient Greek to be virtually a different language, as RB himself admits in the following passage:

"Unfortunately, that has been a hard sell, and few classics or NT programs send students for an estimated two-three years in Greece in order to benefit from what I estimate to be a 60% overlap between modern and KOINH. Definite benefit, but the distance is far enough that they must be classified as 'mutually unintelligble languages', though very closely related through a series of mutually intelligible chrono-dialects."

The average man in the street in today's Greece would not understand you if you spoke to him NT Greek. He also cannot understand the (Koine) Greek NT. RB can correct me if I am wrong. That is why Greeks who have no training in Koine Greek use modern Greek translations of the GNT!

RB's analogy is indeed false. It is just that he denies it with false, or at least misleading, statements. I think RB would have done better if, instead of attempting to reply to the "false analogy" part of my post, he had just ignored it just as he has ignored other statements of my post he could not respond to. :-)

Finally, I will comment on RB's question, "Is an occasional spelling mistake [resulting from the use of the historical pronunciation of RB] too high a price to pay?" It is very disingenuous of RB to ask such a question. The whole thrust of my post has been that the use of the assumed historical or the modern pronunciation places an unnecessary strain on beginning students of Greek because of the fact that the same phonemes are represented by different graphemes and I mentioned a parallel example from English. Making "an occasional spelling mistake" is applicable only for those already possess a thorough knowledge of NT Greek (like RB), using either the historical or the modern pronunciation. Modern Greeks confuse the various representations of "i" sound, i.e., I, EI, U, etc., especially the uneducated ones, and their ancient counterparts made similar mistakes.  These learnt their Greek basically by being immersed in that language, not by memorizing vocabulary, paradigms, etc. like modern students. According to RB, he switched to his version of the historical pronunciation only AFTER he had studied Koine Greek for 25 years, so he himself does not know from personal experience the difficulties faced by beginning students of Greek using the assumed historical pronunciation or the modern pronunciation without the advantage of being completely immersed in the language. 


Leonard Jayawardena
Sri Lanka


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